Lois Capps

Lois Capps (born January 10, 1938) is an American Democratic politician who represented California in the United States House of Representatives from 1998 to 2017. Born Lois Ragnhild Grimsrud in Ladysmith, Wisconsin, to a Lutheran minister from a Norwegian family, she trained as a nurse at Pacific Lutheran University, took a master's degree in religion at Yale Divinity School and later a master's in education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She won the seat of her late husband Walter Capps in a special election in March 1998, and held it as the district was renumbered from the 22nd to the 23rd and then the 24th, covering Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. In the House she sat on the Energy and Commerce Committee and belonged to the New Democrat Coalition, and she was described as a solid liberal. In April 2015 she announced that she would not seek reelection in 2016.